"Villain!" cried the refugee, seizing him by the arm, and giving him a look that curdled his blood, "you are venturing upon a subject that will bring the knife to your throat! Pho, you are a fool;" he added, checking his impetuosity, and grinning,
'A strange, uncomely, jawbone smile;'
"we are Christians here, and we forgive our enemies."
"Forgive?" cried Sterling, "come now, captain Gilbert, that's slippery. I know you better; and I know you have been wronged."
"You are deceived," said Oran Gilbert, laying his hand, with another ominous smile, on the volunteer's shoulder, "I am not an Indian, but a white man, and as you may have seen, forbearing and forgiving. They have told you, (for they have told the same to me,) that I am a wolf's whelp, an eater of men's flesh, and a drinker of blood; and that I never pardoned an injury, though I had grown gray thinking of it. Lies, lies all! I can walk by my father's house, and see the sons of his destroyer sitting in the doors; and yet carry myself like the best Christian of them all: I can be told, too, even by a foul-mouthed dolt like yourself, how shame and sorrow, came into the house, and afterwards death,—and yet feel no hotter for vengeance. All this I can do, because I have a bad memory for matters twenty years old, or more.—Look you," he continued, dropping his tone of irony, and adopting that of menace; "I can forgive treachery as old as that; but I remember a nave's trick a full year. If there be any deceit in you, look well to yourself during that time. You were better to have been hanged as a spy, than to come to me as one.—You shall see!"
"'Slife, sir!" cried Sterling, "you have no consideration for a man's honour!"
But while he spoke, the refugee had raised his finger to his lips, and drawn forth a low whistle; which was almost immediately answered by the appearance of the two individuals who had been in the covert before.
"Bring up the prisoner, and let the men follow," said Gilbert; and they immediately retired.
"Prisoner!" cried Sterling, in surprise, "Male or female?"
"You have volunteered your services among the royal refugees," said Gilbert, turning again to Sterling, and displaying a sardonic grin: "you shall be put on duty forthwith.—Have you ever killed a man?"